This is a short clip from The Lincoln Project that really, really hits home here in Iowa (1 minute):

Think about this for a minute. For those of you who watched the January 6th Special Committee hearing Thursday who read or heard of it, you know that it tied the whole package together with the central focus for this totally illegal attempted takeover of our government on Donald Trump.

Trump was the one who orchestrated an attack on our government. In times of war, this would be treason. In times of peace, sedition. In any case, felonious. 

Add to that, we know through his own admissions that Trump illegally took Top Secret documents to his home(s). The FBI has recovered some, but we know they haven’t gotten them all back despite Trump lying, saying they had all been recovered. And that is at only one of his residences. 

What he has done with the missing documents we have no idea. Did he sell them? Has he given them to our country’s enemies? Have copies been distributed to to most violent operators in the world looking to damage our country? 

And beyond all this, he spends his days traipsing around the country undermining the very basis on which our government’s legitimacy is based – open and honest elections. His mission currently is to elect candidates who also are trying to undermine the legitimacy of our government. 

If Trump is successful, and the far right extremist Trumpist Party wins a majority in our national government, Trump and his ilk may be able to complete the failed coup of January 6th, 2021 by putting people in place that will pass laws that will make his authoritarian minority government legal. Thus the grand experiment with American democracy will end.

Will “we the people” vote meekly to elect the extremists? Will they believe their lies and imaginary bogey men and vote to end our democracy out of unrealistic fears?

You say this isn’t happening in Iowa. Yet not one Iowa Republican has come out to say that what Trump did was criminal and he must be investigated for his crimes. Instead they have meekly bowed and scraped before Trump. They have acted like a bunch of cowards, seeking out the approval of the Don.

Grassley, Ernst, Feenstra, Nunn, Hinson, Miller-Meeks and Reynolds. Every Republican in Iowa.

And just think, if the extremist Trumpist Republican Party wins control of either house of congress, the leadership will be politicians who are beholden to Donald Trump. Committee chairs will be members who are beholden to Donald Trump. Some committee chairs will have either joined in or supported the attempted coup. In short Donald Trump will be in control of the Congress. He already controls the Supreme Court. This is the recipe for a dictatorship. Kevin McCarthy who has embarrassed himself in bowing to Trump will be Speaker of the House.

So when you cast your vote beginning next week the candidate is not Grassley or Feenstra or Nunn or Hinson or Miller-Meeks or Reynolds. The candidate in those cases are all Trump.

We have candidates who will be standing up for the democracy that made America great since 1776. They are on listed on the ballots as Democrats: Mike Franken for Iowa Senate, Ryan Melton in Iowa’s 4th congressional district, Cindy Axne in Iowa’s 3rd, Liz Mathis in Iowa’s 2nd, Christina Bohannan in Iowa’s 1st and Deidre DeJear for governor.

Democracy depends on your vote.